Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Say What?

In order to reform our view on sex we must consider our thoughts, words, and actions. My last blog talked about how our thoughts can influence us, in much of the same way our words also impact us. If it is common for someone to speak of sex in a degrading or disrespectful manner, that person’s actions may also be degrading or disrespectful to the beautiful gift of our sexuality. Talking dirty may be something that is popular, but it trains your brain to think negatively about others and have this distorted image of sex. It’s not just how we talk about sex, but beyond that how we talk about people. Each one of us is created with a special purpose and deserves dignity and respect as a human being.

If we refer to a person as a “piece of meat”, that is clearly not treating them with the dignity and respect they deserve. Since we are called to love and respect everyone through our words, we need to train the filter between our thoughts and what comes out of our mouth. At first it may just mean keeping our mouths shut until we have transformed our thoughts to this new view. In the ideal situation, we won’t have any impure thoughts, and therefore won’t have the temptation to speak any of those thoughts.

However, I have a tendency to speak before I think. If you have a similar tendency, it will be important to focus on training your thoughts to be pure as the initial step. Most people find it is easiest to work on filtering what words you verbalize first. Before letting something slip out of your mouth, think about how it may affect the other people involved. Discern whether or not the comment is respectful of our dignity as human beings. If it is not respectful, we should choose to keep our mouths shut, or come up with something more respectful to share. Changing our words in this way will be able to trigger our sensitivity to our thoughts and impact how we act on these thoughts and words.